Green Eyes
by ardavenport
Summary: Snape hides his heart well. But sometimes his guard slips.


**GREEN EYES**

by ardavenport

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Severus Snape waved his wand with a curt, wordless 'Accio'. The Defense Against the Dark Arts homework flew from the sixth-year students to his desk, forming a neat stack that would provide him with hours of tedious grading later. The perpetrators of the essays waited in their seats for him to begin. With another silent command and flick of his wand, he sent a second pile of scrolls, their last assignment, back to them.

Between his friends, Hermione Granger and Ronald Weasley, Harry Potter caught his scroll with one hand and his expression darkened as he peeked under an edge and glimpsed his grade.

_What was he expecting? Especially when it was so obvious when Granger did his homework for him and Weasley?_

Perhaps he had whined to his friends that he had spent so much time in detention that he couldn't finish it. But he seemed to have all the time in the world to celebrate Gryffindor's win of the school Quidditch Cup. And his House had astonishingly credited the victory to their team's absent captain, at least Professor McGonagall had smugly implied that at breakfast that morning.

Potter took credit that he did not deserve; he cheated on his homework to cover his own mediocre skills, he _stole_ . . . .

_Why did Dumbledore have such faith in this boy's abilities? Why did Dumbledore trust him?_

"Aside from hurling curses, your knowledge, such as it is," he lectured, pacing before his attentive audience, "would not be complete without at least a passing acquaintance with magic that will merely defend against or even capture an adversary. After all 'Defense against the Dark Art's should include 'defense'." Potter had a wary look on his face, as if he suspected what was coming. Snape turned around and paced the other way.

_Did you think that just one morning - or even a dozen mornings - copying notecards listing your father's misdeeds at Hogwarts is nearly enough to atone for what you did? Snape let the loathing he felt flow into his voice._

"We may not want to just hex or . . . eviscerate," he pronounced carefully; Potter winced, "our enemies," he finished. "We may only wish to incapacitate them."

_You don't have the stomach for real curses, Potter. You just read that spell in my book and hurled it at Malfoy without thinking. You didn't even know what it would do._

_Why did Dumbledore trust this reckless child?_

If he thought that Potter had any notion of what he was doing, that he had the strength to consciously inflict such a curse on an enemy, Snape might have thought that he could more credibly challenge the Dark Lord. But he obviously did not. Then he covered up the evidence of his deed. Snape would have dragged him up to Dumbledore right then if he could have proved what he had done. He had to settle for detention, a method that had never taught Potter, or his father, anything.

He ordered the class to pair off and he cleared the floor of desks and chairs with a swipe of his wand. One would attack; the other would both defend, incapacitate and 'capture' the other. It was a stunningly unimaginative start. The attackers used petty hexes while the defenders got so occupied with shield charms that they hardly made an attempt to disarm or capture their opponent. Snape walked among them, occasionally using his own shield against a mis-cast curse that cost their Houses fifty points each.

Harry Potter managed to entangle Weasley with an 'Incarcerous' spell and then cast a challenging glare toward Snape. Did he think that incapacitating Weasley was an accomplishment? Snape turned his back on them though the other students were not much more inspiring. But a few minutes later a shout from Weasley caught his attention.

"Levicorpus!"

Whirling around, Snape saw Weasley on the floor, wand pointed up at Potter, who dangled from one ankle, his black school robes hanging down over his head, exposing his Muggle jeans, dingy gray socks and shoes.

The rest of the class stopped to look, too, so Snape made a special show of walking the perimeter of students to Potter. He had lost both his wand and glasses as he uselessly thrashed about in his robe. With any luck Weasley did not know the countercuse.

Unfortunately, Granger did.

"Liberacorpus!"

Potter came down with a crash. Snape scowled. Of course, Potter had shared his stolen spells with his little friends. Snape had quite forgotten his old school book, left behind in the Potions classroom cupboard. It had been a handy reference when he first started teaching, but he had long ago committed anything valuable from his school years to memory and Snape disdained both sentimentality and nostalgia. But in retrospect, it had been a dangerous mistake to leave it where it could be found and misused by immature hands.

His head and arms free, Potter was now on his hands and knees, robe bunched up around his middle and outstretched hands patting the ground for dropped wand and glasses. He was as blind as his father had been, in more ways than one. Snape spotted the missing eyeglasses conveniently by his left foot.

_Oh, well. Accidents happened._

At Snape's feet, Potter froze at the sound of glass and frame crunching. The older man smirked. He was pathetic. All Voldemort had to do was knock off his glasses and he was done.

Potter looked up.

Snape inhaled, the air hissing through his teeth.

Green eyes.

Unmasked from the eyeglasses that were so much like his father's, Harry Potter's eyes really were exactly like his mother's. Now imploring up at him, they had completely caught him off guard.

_Lily . . . . _

His throat tightened.

_I'm so sorry. I could have protected you, but I drove you away. It was all my fault . . . ._

Snape ruthlessly clamped his mind down on the emotions escaped from the old wound. There was an errant, arrogant school boy at his feet, nothing more. Whipping out his wand, He stepped back.

"Reparo."

Shards of glass and the twisted frame reformed into whole eyeglasses again. He bent down and scooped them out along with a handful of Potter's collar. It was not as easy as it used to be. The boy had grown in the past year. At sixteen, he was nearly man-sized. And looking more like James than ever.

Snape kept that thought firmly in his mind.

"Get up, Potter." He jammed the glasses back on his face.

On his feet, the boy shook off his hand.

Snape cast his glare over the rest of the class. "I'm not seeing a lot of practicing. Or do you need a demonstration of your assignment?" He flicked his wand upward.

The pairs of students hastily reformed and resumed throwing spells at each other. Without a backward glance he went to his desk and distracted himself with the homework scrolls and kept his gaze pointed away from Potter and his friends. He mentally went through the long list of shortcomings of James Potter and his son, wrapping them around his bitter regrets. It was his armor when he went among the Death Eaters and to Voldemort, secretly acting as Dumbledore's spy. That old hatred protected him, kept his love for Lily deeply hidden from even the Dark Lord. And Harry Potter, with his arrogance, lying and cheating, his father's son through and through, made it easy.

It was Lily who had brought Voldemort down back then, her last noble act, a mother dying to protect her son. And her magic had fractured Voldemort's soul, some of it becoming part of her son and protecting him through some unfathomable twist that only a wizard on Dumbledore's level could comprehend. But if Harry Potter was just an instrument of Lily's sacrifice, to be used and sacrificed in the end to finally destroy Voldemort, then why did Dumbledore confide in him, trust him?

Snape did not look at Potter for the rest of the class and he sat at his desk after the room had emptied of students.

_Why did Dumbledore trust this boy?_

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******* END *******

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**Disclaimer**: All characters and situations belong to JKR; I'm just playing in her sandbox.


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